Cruz, the Rangers’ 32-year-old right fielder, isn’t deluding himself. The playoffs begin this week, accompanied by a media swarm and warmed-over questions about last October’s World Series loss to St. Louis.

The Rangers have forged the American League’s best record, with four regular-season games left, but they know these past 158 games have done nothing to reframe their postseason narrative.

Texas is the poor team that has lost two straight World Series — and, worse, on that wretched night last Oct. 27 in St. Louis twice came within one strike in Game 6 of winning the first championship in franchise history, before losing 10-9 in 11 innings.

By almost any measure, Cruz had a 99 percent heroic postseason, hitting a record-tying eight home runs, including one in the seventh inning of World Series Game 6 that gave Texas a 6-4 lead.

Even so, he enters this week’s playoffs largely cast as the outfielder who was unable to make a play on Freese’s ninth-inning Game 6 triple that drove in two runs, tying the score 7-7 and sending the game into extra innings.

Cruz is well aware that replays will be aired ad nauseam this October, not that they will be any more vivid than those still in his head.

“It’s part of the game,” he shrugs. “Nothing you can do to avoid that.”

A night of drama

In February, Rangers manager Ron Washington played clubhouse psychologist on the first day of training camp in Surprise, Ariz.

He gazed around the room and told the players they had nothing to be ashamed of. He reminded that 28 other major league teams would love to have come so close to a title.

He asked if any players wanted to speak. Michael Young and Joe Nathan did, but neither mentioned Game 6. Washington picked up a piece of paper, wadded it and tossed it into a trash can.

“That’s 2011,” he announced.

Nothing, not even a World Series title next month, will ever erase last year’s Game 6, or the following night’s 6-2 loss in Game 7.

The sting and disappointment didn’t forever disappear into that Arizona trash can, but the Rangers seem to have compartmentalized 2011.

“Everyone thought we were going to have a hangover, but we didn’t have a hangover,” Washington says.

The playoffs, however, will present fresh emotional challenges, especially if the Rangers advance to a third straight World Series. Comparisons to the 1990s Buffalo Bills, losers of four straight Super Bowls, would intensify.

“We’re going forward,” Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre says. “We know we have a team that can do better than we did last year. There’s nothing we can do about last year.

“Nothing good is going to come out of thinking about last year.”

Perhaps Game 6 would be easier to keep in the rearview mirror if it weren’t nationally considered one of the most dramatic games in the 107 World Series.

St. Louis’ rallies from 7-5 in the bottom of the ninth and 9-7 in the 10th were undeniably riveting.

It’s no accident that MLB added Blu-ray and DVD copies of Game 6 to its Baseball’s Greatest Games collection.

Or that Cardinals manager Tony La Russa chose One Last Strike as the title of his recently released memoir.

“There’s a bunch of stuff that sounds Hollywood-ish, fictionalized,” says La Russa, who retired three days after the World Series. “But it really happened on our club. And I’m sure the same thing was true with the Rangers.”

La Russa, who managed 5,097 major league games and has followed the sport passionately since age 5, sums up Game 6 thusly, at age 67:

“I know it’s in the conversation as one of the greatest, most exciting World Series games of all time. Well, if all you’d known your whole life was baseball, what do you think? And it’s your last season?

“You’re thankful, but you don’t know who to thank.”

Early chances missed

The Rangers understandably don’t care to dwell on the Game 6 particulars.

But the DVD, details in La Russa’s book and interviews with La Russa and others kindle what-ifs from that night.

What if Major League Baseball officials had not postponed the game by 24 hours? They made that decision at 2:21 p.m. on Oct. 26, although by that evening the showers were intermittent.

The delay gave the Cardinals more time to recover from losing Games 4 and 5 in Arlington. It also enabled them to start ace pitcher Chris Carpenter in Game 7.

As for facing Rangers starter Colby Lewis in Game 6, La Russa believed that seeing him for the second time in the series would benefit Cardinals hitters.

“That turned out not to be true,” he says.

Then the Cardinals committed three early errors and fell behind 4-3 after five innings.

“You expected a well-played game, then all of a sudden we’re stinking up the joint,” La Russa says.

The Cardinals were fortunate not to fall into a deep hole. Seven of the first 14 Rangers reached base against St. Louis starter Jaime Garcia. Through four innings, Texas left five runners on base and hit into two double plays.

“Then Mike has a couple of plays that give us a run here and a run there that kept us in it,” La Russa says of Rangers first baseman Young’s errors in the fourth and sixth innings, the second of which led to St. Louis tying the score at 4 and to Washington pulling Lewis with one out.

Still, relievers Alexi Ogando and Derek Holland continued to stymie the Cardinals. Between the third and eighth innings, 18 straight St. Louis batters failed to hit a ball out of the infield.

When back-to-back Beltre and Cruz home runs triggered a three-run seventh, giving Texas a 7-4 lead, it seemed the early Texas miscues and blown chances wouldn’t matter.

With one out in the bottom of the eighth, Allen Craig hit a solo home run off Holland to cut the lead to 7-5. In hindsight, the only reason Craig was in the game was that Matt Holliday had injured his hand while getting picked off third base in the sixth.

That seemed like a minor detail when Rangers closer Neftali Feliz took the mound in the ninth with a two-run lead.

“Looking back, after the early sloppy play, you see the dramatics,” La Russa says. “You have heroes jumping forth on both teams. It turned out we had the last hero. Really, that was the difference.”

Cards wouldn’t fold

That hero was St. Louis native David Freese. Not that there was much hint of dramatics to come when Feliz struck out ninth-inning leadoff hitter Ryan Theriot.

Already, La Russa had instructed players in the dugout and called to the bullpen to remind everyone to stay on the field and thank the fans if the Rangers won.

Then Albert Pujols hit Feliz’s first pitch for a double, Feliz walked Lance Berkman on four pitches, then struck out Craig on a slider.

“Got him looking; two out,” Fox’s Joe Buck told the TV audience. “And the Rangers are one out away from the championship.”

On a 1-1 count to Freese, Feliz induced a swing and miss. “And now the Rangers are one strike away,” Buck announced.

As Feliz delivered the potential title-clinching fastball, La Russa said he was thrilled to see right-hander Freese extend his hands and set his front foot toward the outside corner of the plate.

La Russa said he believes the Rangers underestimated Freese’s opposite-field power. He wonders if that factored in to Cruz not being positioned deeper, or not breaking back more quickly on the ball.

Cruz did not take a straight angle toward the ball, but La Russa and Freese said they still believed he would catch it.

“If he gloved it, he was a World Series hero for the ages,” La Russa wrote in his memoir. “If he didn’t, we were still in this thing.”

The ball cleared Cruz’s glove by two feet and struck near the bottom of the wall. Busch Stadium fans, most wearing coats and gloves on the 50-degree night, erupted as the tying runs crossed the plate.

The celebration was short-lived. Josh Hamilton’s two-run homer in the 10th gave Texas a 9-7 lead. La Russa again reminded his players to stay and thank the fans if Texas won.

La Russa says he expected Feliz to return in the bottom of the 10th. Washington contends that Feliz was too distraught. Feliz said he calmed down after Hamilton’s home run and wanted to pitch.

Oliver allowed two singles, Kyle Lohse bunted both runners over and the Cardinals, against reliever Scott Feldman, again pushed across two runs.

The tying hit by Berkman occurred when the Rangers, again, were within one strike of the title. Only one other team, Boston against the Mets in 1986, had reached the final strike of a World Series and failed to win.

The Rangers’ horror culminated in the 11th, when Freese hit a leadoff homer against Mark Lowe. Weeks later, Washington was asked if he had any what-ifs.

“Yeah. What if Feliz would have made the pitch we needed? What if Cruz had caught that ball? What if Darren would have gotten those two left-handers out and faced the pitcher? Yeah, what if?”

Still a hero

The World Series ended late Friday night, Oct. 28, at Busch Stadium.

The next afternoon, Cruz fulfilled a commitment to sign autographs at the Academy Sports and Outdoors in Mesquite.

He briefly considered begging out, after a playoff run in which he was MVP of the American League Championship Series against Detroit, hit a home run in Game 6 of the World Series but also factored in the loss.

But he went to the Academy store, where a line of fans wrapped around the outside of the building. He says the fans helped ease the hurt.

“We play for the fans, you know?” he said. “It’s not just for ourselves and our teammates. The fans are there to support us. Sometimes you need to show that you love them back.”

A few days later, Cruz returned to his home in the Dominican Republic, in Las Matas de Santa Cruz, a town of about 19,000.

One his best friends, Luis Esmurdoc, picked him up at the airport. They thought Cruz’s night arrival was a secret, but as they approached his home, thousands lined the streets.

“It was a big surprise party,” Esmurdoc says now, through a translator. “He is a hero to us.”

Last week, Esmurdoc was at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, where it was announced that Cruz, the Arlington Fire Department and the Rangers Foundation were donating a fire truck and two ambulances to Cruz’s hometown, which owns neither type of emergency vehicle.

Esmurdoc will be the fire chief. He and Cruz smiled broadly, and their eyes glistened as they inspected the fire truck and one of the ambulances.

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